Cyber Attacks: Securing Agencies’ICT Systems
. In the government sector, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD)3 has estimated that between January and December 2012, there were over 1790 security incidents against Australian Government agencies. Of these, 685 ... responsibility of agencies, having regard to their business operations and specific risks. In the context of a national government, those risks can range from threats to national security through to the disclosure ... agencies compliance with the four mandatory ICT security strategies and related controls in the Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM). The audit also considered the overall ICT security ... ... Cyber-security strategy needs consistent implementation and periodic reviews ... List of 35 mitigation controls against cyber intrusions are a basic tool of information security strategy of the Australian Government. Top four are: 1. application whitelisting, 2. patching ... application, 3. patching operating systems, 4. minimising administrative privileges. Analysis by the ANAO helps to fill gaps and to direct next steps.
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Information Technology Cost Estimation Agencies Need to Address Significant Weakness in Policies and Practices
and agencies have appropriately implement costestimating policies an procedures(four caracteristics of a reliable cost estimation: comprehensive, well-documented, accurate, credible). ... To estimate reliable cost for the sucess of an IT program by providing the basis for the informed decision making and realistic budget information. To assess the extent to which selected departments ... IT cost estimation ... Check out what may go wrong with the information technology cost estimation. Results of the US GAO audit can help to identify high risk areas: comprehensiveness of estimations, their documentation ... , lack of adequacy and inadequate implementation.
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Quality of public services in information society in 2010
. Information about the services is still difficult to find on websites and people who use public services must still submit unjustified documents, proof of facts or go to administrative agencies in person ... if this is acceptable to the person in question. Even though state and local government agencies have made efforts to implement the principles of good administration, the National Audit Office cannot affirm ... The National Audit Office found that irrespective of a few positive changes, the quality of provision of public services in information society has not improved significantly in comparison to 2007 ... ... The quality of public services has been improved but still isn’t good enough ... is still difficult to find on websites and people who use public services must still submit unjustified documents, proof of facts or go to administrative agencies in person. ... Irrespective of a few positive changes, the quality of provision of public services in information society has not improved significantly in comparison to 2007. Information about the services
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Report to on the user-friendliness and user involvement in the development of e-government services in Denmark
e-government services: - NemID (EasyID – the Danish public sector common digital signature solution), The Danish Agency for Digitisation (the Ministry of Finance); - TastSelv Borger (E-tax self-service ... The e-government user-friendliness requirements are divided into five overall categories: language, design and flow, data and functionality, and accessibility. 1) The objective of the study ... is to provide an assessment of the authorities’ efforts to ensure that e-government services are user-friendly. The report answers the following questions: - Have the authorities involved the users ... ... User-friendliness of public services should be consistenty required and tested ... The Danish Rigsrevisionen is of the opinion that the user-friendliness of the services can be improved if the authorities meet all the requirements of the Danish Agency for Digitisation concerning ... the matter. The audit covered user-friendliness related problems in case of five systems, before and after the launch. The systems take-up was also considered, as well as communicating with citizens who ... are unable to use digital services.
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State aid for IT projects in social and health care
Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes), regional councils (previously state provincial offices), and indirectly by the Slot Machine Association under the direction of the Ministry of Social Affairs ... In 2000-2009 about 180 million euros in national and European Union funds went to finance information technology projects in social and health care, not including the costs of developing national ... information system services (KanTa project) or the National Project for Social Services IT (Tikesos project). Financing has been provided by the Ministry of Social Affairs and H ealth, the Finnish Funding ... Difficult coordination of IT projects ... Finish Audit Office analyzed results of poor cooperation between authorities on national and local level in social and health care projects: difficult integration of information systems and poor ... coordination of the financing information technology projects, including double financing.
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Data security and positions with access to confidential information
This government wide audit on information security and positions with access to confidential information has been performed at all ministries ans for each ministry also at one of the agencies ... . The 2007 Civil Service Data Information Security Decree (in Dutch: VIR 2007) is the legal foundation of the first part of this audit (data security). The Security Screening Act (in Dutch: WVO ... ) is the foundation of the second part (positions with access to confidential information). Only four of the organizations we have audited show an acceptible level of compliance with the 2007 Civil Service Data ... ... Shortcomings in information security and in positions with access to confidential information ... Surprising weaknesses were revealed by the NCA in its Government-wide operational audit performed as part of the 2011 audit into the state of central government accounts: Poor quality of data ... protection policy and poor protection of information systems. Also, non vetted positions with access to confidential information.
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VETERANS’ HEALTH CARE - Preliminary Observations on VHA’s Claims Processing Delays and Efforts to Improve the Timeliness of Payments to Community Providers
existing VA care in the community programs, as required by law, the agency said it will examine strategies for improving the timeliness and accuracy of its payments to community providers.<br ... Due to increases in expenditures and utilization of VA care in the community services in recent years, VHA has had difficulty processing claims in a timely manner. In planning to consolidate its ... /> This statement, which is based on ongoing work, summarizes GAO’s preliminary observations about (1) VHA’s, Medicare’s, and TRICARE’s claims processing timeliness in fiscal year 2015; (2) factors that have impeded ... Data processing hold back by technology limitation, workload and administrative burden ... US GAO analyzed all factors of slower processing and user unfriendliness that occur sometimes to the veterans healthcare. The main focus is data processing - and it has been proved that it can ... be failing not only because of technology, but also because of work-process design, staff and organisation.
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Use of European Union funds in promoting information society
The National Audit Office audited the use of the aid allocated from the structural funds of the European Union (hereinafter EU aid) in the information technology (IT) area of the state. The National ... Audit Office checked whether the distribution of funds for the development of the information society has been balanced and transparent, and whether the distribution of aid is adequately supervised ... . Balanced distribution of aid means that development of the information society entails paying attention (and ideally providing proportional funding) to information systems aimed at the public sector, private ... Riigikontroll auditeeris Euroopa Liidu struktuurifondidest ehk tõukefondidest eraldatud toetuste (edaspidi ELi toetusraha) kasutamist riigi infotehnoloogia (IT) valdkonnas. Uuriti, kas raha jagamine ... infoühiskonna arendamise eesmärgil on olnud tasakaalustatud ja läbipaistev ning kas toetuste jagamise üle tehakse piisavat järelevalvet. Riigikontrolli hinnangul on riik infoühiskonna arengukava rakendamiseks ... toetuste jagamisel keskendunud liiga riigile suunatud IT-arenduste rahastamisele ning jätnud tagaplaanile ettevõtete konkurentsivõime parandamisele ja kolmandale sektorile suunatud IT arendusprojektide ... Balance needed for success of Information Society Development Plan ... 50% of aid has been granted primarily for the development of information systems of state agencies, i.e. as much as the other two target groups - business and citizens - put together. Information ... , true suppervision and measurement of progress are listed by the Estonian SAI as next key elements necessary to keep balanced development of strategy for Information Society.
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Lessons learned from government ICT-projects
This audit has been performed on request of the Dutch parliament. Some newspapers mentioned government losses of four to five billion euro's on a yearly bases. These news items caused the parliament ... to request this audit. The audit has been performed in only 5 months time and consisted of the re-use of earlier performed audits. We have 'recycled' earlier findings about ICT-projects. ... 'Expensive' does not always mean 'High Quality', so... do not feed the spiral ... Excellent analysis of systemic errors commited when designing Government IT projects. The report aims at the essence of problems which are encountered far from information technologies - in: politics ... , business, psychology... Do not be mislead by date of report, it is evergreen for all who really want to know why IT projects fail.
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The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) conducted an audit on the information systems in the area of service delivery to improve the system’s efficiency and convenience.
Korea was recognized as an Information Technology (IT) powerhouse by the international community of the UN in 2010. Such an achievement is attributable to the significant investments that the Korean ... government has commissioned toward improving the country’s information infrastructure within a short period of time.<br/> The government is investing 1 trillion won every year in an e-government project ... for citizens in the welfare and employment sectors by utilizing the renewed information infrastructure.<br/> However, the information system of some government ministries proved to have overlapping functions ... Enormous IT investments require tremendous coordination ... Korean government is investing 1 trillion won in e-government projectsevery year. Thus, the country has earned a reputation for the IT powerhouse. Apart from undeniable advantages, the huge scale ... and the speed, the information technologies are implemented with, cause some problems to be tackled. The SAI Korea turns special atention to two of them: overlapping functionalities and interconnectivity issues.
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